“Launcelot darling” shrugged his shoulders with a peevish gesture, which exhibited him rather as a discontented darling.
“You talk like a baby, Laura,” he said, contemptuously; “I suppose the ‘handsome allowance’ Mr. Monckton promises will be about two or three hundred a year, or so; something that I’m to eke out by my industry. Heaven knows he has preached to me enough about the necessity of being industrious. One would think that an artist was a bricklayer or a stonemason, to hear him talk.”
Eleanor turned away from the window as Launcelot Darrell said this; she could not suffer her husband to be undefended while she was by.
“I have no doubt whatever Mr. Monckton said was right, Mr. Darrell,” she exclaimed, lifting her head proudly, as if in defiance of any voice that should gainsay her husband’s merits.
“No doubt, Mrs. Monckton; but there’s a certain sledgehammer-like way of propounding that which is right that isn’t always pleasant. I don’t want to be reminded that an artist’s calling is a trade, and that when the Graces bless me with a happy thought I must work like a slave until I’ve hammered it out upon canvas and sent it into the market for sale.”
“Some people think the Graces are propitiated by hard labour,” Richard Thornton said, quietly, without raising his eyes from his rapid pencil, “and that the happiest thoughts are apt to come when a man has his brush in his hand, rather than when he is lying on a sofa reading French novels; though I have known artists who preferred that method of waiting for inspiration. For my own part, I believe in the inspiration that grows out of patient labour.”
“Yes,” Mr. Darrell answered, with an air of lazy indifference,—an air which plainly expressed that he disdained to discuss art-topics with a scene-painter, “I dare say you find it answer—in your line. You must splash over a good deal of canvas before you can produce a transformation-scene, I suppose?”
“Peter Paul Rubens got over a good deal of canvas,” said Richard, “and Raffaello Sanzio d’Urbino did something in that way, if we may judge by the cartoons and a few other trifles.”
“Oh, of course, there were giants in those days. I don’t aspire to rival any such Patagonians. I don’t see why people should be compelled to walk through a picture-gallery a mile long before they can pronounce an opinion upon a painter’s merits. I should be very well contented if my chance with posterity rested upon half-a-dozen pictures no bigger than Millais’s ‘Huguenots;’ and as good.”
“And I’m sure you could do dozens and dozens as good as that,” cried Laura. “Why, it’s only a lady tying a scarf round her lover’s arm, and a lot of green leaves. Of course it’s very pretty, you know, and one feels very much for her, poor thing, and one’s afraid that he’ll let those cruel Catholics kill him, and that she’ll die broken-hearted. But you could paint lots of pictures like that, Launcelot, if you chose.”